This post is an early version of a thought/anecdote that eventually made its way into my book, Sovereign.
When I first transitioned from corporate law to tech, I spent time working with a range of startups. At one, where I reported directly to the CEO, we were discussing an upcoming project I'd be driving forward.
"How long do you think this will take?" He asked. I thought about it for a moment, pattern-matching against my most recent experiences driving cross-functional projects in a law firm.
"Probably about two months" I said, weighing up the amount of time it would take for VPs to buy into the plan, and then the time to roll out and iterate.
"Why not two weeks?" He asked. I resisted the flaring urge to reject this suggestion immediately. CEOs loved setting unrealistic deadlines that they could later flog you for when you naively committed to them.
But in this case… I thought about it. Did it really need to take two months or was just that the default number I threw out to give everything enough time to fall into place risk-free?
After that day, I realised this was a useful thought exercise. The truth is that most timelines, whether too short or too long, are entirely arbitrary.
Parkinson's Law is the oft-quoted adage that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion." The idea was coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a 1955 essay, suggesting that tasks tend to take longer than needed simply because more time has been allocated for them.
Many things take as long as you allow.
Try this thought exercise for yourself:
How would your approach change if you had to achieve your two-year goals in two months?
When we compress timelines, we often find creative solutions and efficiencies we wouldn't have discovered otherwise. This approach:
- Forces us to prioritise and focus on what's truly essential
- Encourages rapid prototyping and iteration
- Helps us avoid perfectionism and overthinking
This is not an exhortation to rush or cut corners. Undue haste has a heavy cost. Instead, this thought exercise will help break limiting frames around what is possible in a short space of time. And if you end up choosing a longer timeframe, you can make those decisions consciously rather than by default, with a full understanding of the intentional tradeoffs you're making.
Most timelines, whether short or long, are entirely arbitrary. Things take as long as you allow. The test is what you'd adjust if you had drastically more or less time than anticipated.
